Justice
* Under construction
Forgiveness, Justice and Terrorism
Understanding and Judging: Mutually Exclusive?
The seven-to-twelve-year-old period, then, constitutes one of particular importance for moral education.
It is at this age also that the concept of justice is born, simultaneously with the understanding of the relationship between one's acts and the needs of others. The sense justice, so often missing in man, is found in the development of the young child.
The justice usually found around the school and in the family could be called "distributive justice"--that is to say, equality for all, as much in the distribution of punishments as of rewards. Special treatment of one individual seems to constitute an injustice; this introduces the concept of legal right. There is here an affirmation of individuality in the sense of egoism and isolation. Such a concept does not encourage interior development. On the other hand, justice--although usually not considered in this light--is born specifically from interior education. The principle of distributive justice and individual right, purely external, destroys the inborn, natural sense of true justice.
From my notes on the work of Maria Montessori